Samsung Galaxy S8 – what we know

Samsung have a habit of launching their new phones at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona which means there is every likelihood of the handset arriving late February or March 2017.

Specifically next year’s Mobile World Congress takes place between February 27th and March 2nd so watch out for Samsung’s announcement then.

After this year’s disaster over the Samsung Note and it’s ‘over heating’ batteries executives will be, and must be, determined to be absolutely sure there will be no problems with the new handset, reputations are easily lost. One can only imagine the pain felt by Samsung staff when boarding flights to hear their devices being singled out for special treatment over fears of them exploding mid-flight. One can assume that engineers will be making sure that the Galaxy S8 doesn’t have the same issue.

Anyway, rumours abound around the new device and the camera is focus of much debate. It is felt the new device will almost certainly have a dual-lens camera and follow in the footsteps of recent Samsung models and enjoy superb quality. The company recently filed a patent in South Korea which detailed improvements to mobile phone camera zoom functionality. As a result we could see improvements in this area.

The screen is likely to come in two variants: 5.7 inches and 6.2 using 4k display resolution which is a nod to increase VR use. As one’s eyes are very near the screen, using a VR headset, pixel quality is very important. This will become more and more important over time. Many have predicted that this Christmas will see an explosion in the use of VR headsets. The larger screens and the high resolution almost begin to put the handset in Tablet territory with the use one can get from the screen.

The processing is likely to be super fast with a built in Snapdragon X16 modem. It is at this point that we begin to lose track of the technical details of things and simply get to understand that the rumours all suggest the speeds will be fast and give users a great experience.

The new handsets are likely to be priced competitively for the high end market but that still means a lot of money. An S7 Edge is £639 for the 32 GB model so we expect pricing to be a little higher but not by much.

So as the weather begins to get a little better and we head to Spring 2017 another new phone will hit the market and push things onwards. There are plenty of indicators that suggest 2017 could be a very interesting year – The return of Nokia to the smartphone market, the start of 5G services and the iPhone’s Tenth birthday.